12 Best NOW&FE Wine Dinners: Palace Cafe
The New Orleans Wine & Food Experience dinner at Palace Cafe rides all the current trends: sous vide-cooked scallops, roasted marrow bone (seven NOW&FE dinners are serving this), wild boar, and spinalis (the super-tender strip of lean meat that runs around the fat of a ribeye. Despite that (or perhaps because of it), this is an interesting menu. The wine come from a relatively new Sonoma County winery, one that's of recent appearance in our area, anyway. Clay Mauritson of Mauritson Wines will be in attendance to talk about his wines. I'm interested in the ones from the Rockpile AVA.
Prosciutto Beggars Purse
Crab boiled mozzarella, tomato gelee, basil pesto
Wine: Mauritson Rose
Sous Vide Diver Sea Scallop
Seared, endive and grapefruit salad
Wine: Mauritson Sauvignon Blanc
Roasted Veal Marrow Bone
Louisiana crawfish, smoked shallot gremolata
Wine: Mauritson Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley
Grilled Wild Boar Tenderloin
Blackberry-rhubarb glaze, anise puree
Wine: Rockpile Zinfandel, Westphal Ridge Vineyard
Seared Rib-eye Spinalis
Porcini and foie gras duxelle, roasted fingerling potatoes, beurre noisette
Wine: Rockpile Cabernet Sauvignon Rockpile Ridge Vineyard
Poached Rockpile Pear
St. Azur Bleu Cheese, Caramel
Wine: Rockpile Independence $
The price of the dinner is $115 inclusive. Reservations are essential at the number below. The date for this year's New Orleans Wine and Food Experience winemaker dinners is Wednesday, May 22. This is one of what I think will be among the twelve best of the field of thirty-eight. The others will appear here every day until the big night. Left out: dinners that are already booked up (!), and those that didn't publish their menus on the NOW&FE website (dumb).
Palace Cafe. French Quarter: 605 Canal. 504-523-1661. www.palacecafe.com.
Restaurants or organizations with upcoming special events are invited to submit their details to this free department at news@nomenu.com.
